Author
Topic: Update---Trying to save a colony. Could use some advice. (Read 1079 times)

After all the great information you guys have taken the time to pass on to me recently I just wanted to let you all know what I did in an attempt to strengthen this very weak colony with a queen that has genetics I really want to preserve.We enjoyed a beautiful day yesterday with about 4hrs with no wind and temperatures above 60degF, 15.5degC for you Finski. My original plan was to find and capture the queen in the colony that started this whole thing by swarming in September and placing her and a generous number of bees in a nuc I had prepared. The nuc would consist of a deep and medium box. The medium box filled with capped honey, the deep filled with 3 frames of honey/pollen and 2 empty brood frames. Then install my desired Russian queen with her meager number of subjects in the place that had been occupied by the previously mentioned colony and do a paper combine with the left over bees as well as have the foragers return home to their home location. Well things didn't work out that way because I couldn't find the queen in the donor hive. I looked and looked but no luck, I know she is there but she hid very well and the population was large. So what I did was install my desired queen in the nuc, stole a frame of capped brood from the donor hive and swapped the locations of the hives. Now the strong hives foragers will return to the weak hive and increase their population. This combined with the smaller space to keep warm and the honey stores I hope will give my Russian queen a fighting chance to survive winter. I also gave each colony a pollen patty just cause.Feel free to comment or be critical. I value your input.

.I had a week ago very strong hive. It has bees in 4 boxes. Neighour had only one handfull. It seems that neighbour bees have moved to next door-

I wanted to split the colony and give more gang to a mating nuc which practically had only the queen. I cannot look for queen from that bee porriage. I splitted the colony 2+2 boxes.After two days I looked which is calm with queen and which is nervous without the queen. The answer was very clear. When I gove a new queen, workers started to ventilate happily. Next day, are they nervous still? No, they rushed on me. They had got their ego back.

I think your action was reasonable. I have done essentially the same thing, but in the spring not winter. Keep a close eye on the population in both hives. The bees are slow to build population this time of year. It may be necessary to move some brood later to keep the weak hive with enough bees.

I think your action was reasonable. I have done essentially the same thing, but in the spring not winter. Keep a close eye on the population in both hives. The bees are slow to build population this time of year. It may be necessary to move some brood later to keep the weak hive with enough bees.

I will watch them closely. Thanks for the positive response. First year and learning lots.

.I had a week ago very strong hive. It has bees in 4 boxes. Neighour had only one handfull. It seems that neighbour bees have moved to next door-

I wanted to split the colony and give more gang to a mating nuc which practically had only the queen. I cannot look for queen from that bee porriage. I splitted the colony 2+2 boxes.After two days I looked which is calm with queen and which is nervous without the queen. The answer was very clear. When I gove a new queen, workers started to ventilate happily. Next day, are they nervous still? No, they rushed on me. They had got their ego back.

I got it. Took me a little while. But, I got it. Thanks Finski. Sorry but at first I didn't understand what you were saying.